Tiny House Furniture Ideas for the Best Tiny House Design and Layout

Do you live in a tiny house? Or do you have plans to buy a tiny house in the future? If so, you’ve come to the perfect place. Today I’ll be showering you with so much tiny house furniture inspiration that you’ll need an additional tiny house loft just to store all of your small space ideas!

Be sure to read through to the end because I’ve also included a room-by-room guide to furnishing small spaces. 

I want you to have the right furniture so you can take your tiny house experience to the limit. But first, who am I, and why should you trust me, a stranger on the internet?

Excellent questions.

I am a tiny home dweller- the kind who absolutely lives for a good furniture store. I also happen to be somewhat of a minimalist, so I’m a big fan of crafty tiny home furnishings that can save space, offer storage, and keep clutter at bay so I can enjoy a clean living area.

Why it’s important to have great tiny house furniture.

The tiny house lifestyle is all about living your best life, so you’ll want to find tiny house furniture options that offer the perfect solution for your small space bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, dining area, and tiny house living room. Ideally, your furnishings will create visual interest while providing extra storage space.

Oh, and boring isn’t going to cut it in a tiny home, so I’m going to introduce you to ideas and tiny house furniture pieces that make your jaw drop like a drop-leaf table!

Together we’ll tackle each area of a tiny house, but before we get into the finer points of wall-mounted tables, seating for guests, and how to provide a work surface for each member of your family, let’s discuss what makes a piece of furniture a good fit for a tiny house.

What makes for good tiny house furniture?

Before you go on a shopping spree, it’s a good idea to identify which furniture attributes will serve you in a tiny home. Personally, I look for pieces that:

• Are durable
• Save space
• Provide storage
• Require minimal Rubik’s Cube-ing

Tiny house furniture should be durable.

When you live in a home with small square footage, you will use your furniture 10x harder than you would in a traditional home. Trust me.

This means the things you buy must be durable. After all, saving space doesn’t matter if you have to replace the bar stools in your dining room every six months.

Tiny house furniture should save space.

This one might seem obvious, but I want to plant the idea that there are many ways to accomplish this goal.

Maybe one piece of a table can fold to allow more access when you have guests over. Or maybe built-ins could provide shelves that take advantage of vertical space. (Which will save you the all-valuable floor space!)

Like I said, there is no one way to save space in a tiny, but let me just end this section by saying that any furniture item that can double as something else is your friend! Like this Convenience Concepts Designs4Comfort Storage Ottoman With Trays, which is an ottoman. That is also a coffee table. That also offers storage and comes with dining trays.

Tiny house furniture should provide storage.

Saving space and providing extra space are different things- and you need both when it comes to tiny houses! Furniture is a great way to add storage because most pieces of furniture include a ton of unused space. Take a coffee table, for example.

Many versions offer no storage at all, but for a tiny home, you’ll want something like this Amethy Mid-Century Modern Lift-top Coffee Table With Storage.

With the right pieces, you can also utilize the space inside the couch, behind the medicine cabinet, or even under the bed.

Tiny house furniture should require minimal Rubik’s Cube-ing.

Ah, Rubik’s Cube-ing. Remember those infuriating (I mean fun) multi-colored blocks that require twisting and turning to solve? Yeah, believe it or not, those things can teach us a lot about furnishing tiny houses!

Most tiny homes will require a small amount of shifting things around, e.g., Rubik’s Cube-ing. Rubik’s Cube-ing could look like folding beds or tables into walls, turning couches into trundle beds, or adding leaves to a leaf table to create more space.

Rubik’s Cube-ing is an expected part of tiny living, but you’ll want to do it as little as possible. It’s nice if your furnishings can offer storage space or double as beds for occasional guests, but be sure to sleep on it before you buy furniture that requires frequent or cumbersome Rubik’s Cube-ing.

It’s easy to fold tables or beds into a wall, but you don’t want to fold yourself into a pretzel because your floor plan dictates that you must Rubik’s Cube every piece of tiny home furniture!

This HOMCOM Kitchen Island on Wheels is a great example of a furniture piece that requires minimal Rubik’s Cube-ing. For example, when necessary, you can position it to add an L-shaped extension to your kitchen counter. And when you’re done with your baking project (or whatever you’re doing!), you can simply push it against the wall where it lives the rest of the time.

The best furniture for your tiny house living room.

Couches

Fire up that coffee maker and pour yourself a cup of the good stuff because we’re going to start by tackling the couch. (AKA the single most important piece of furniture in a tiny house!)

In any home, you’re likely to spend a fair amount of time on the couch, but for those living in tiny houses, it’s especially important. This is because there are fewer spaces in the home to relax. And with the power invested in me as a tiny home dweller, I beg you to make your couch a comfortable one.

Do whatever you want in your tiny house kitchens and bathrooms, but please don’t buy a hard couch just because it happens to expand into a trundle bed. I care about you, and I don’t want you to make such a mistake and then pay for it in the form of a sore rear end.

In addition to comfort, there are a few other considerations. So here are some questions to guide you in choosing a couch for your small space.

• Will there be enough seating for everyone in the family? (Hint: L-shaped couches take up a bit more floor space but provide more breathing room + allow people to face each other!)
• Will the couch/living area serve as a tiny dining room? 
• What would provide more value? A storage couch to store extra linens? Or a couch that doubles as a bed? (A tiny living area is a multi use space, but you can’t have it all.) 

Your tiny house needs will be different than mine, but for what it’s worth, I am obsessed with the couch in my tiny home. The Jovie Sectional Couch by Home Reserve is an L-shaped couch with storage space that’s easy to access and comes with removable covers for easy cleaning. Oh, and it happens to be the most comfortable thing in the world. 

If you’d like more info about it, I’ve included the link in the guide below!

Anyway, once you decide on a couch, it will be time to answer a very important question.

Will your tiny house have a coffee table? 

This question has created a great debate in tiny house communities everywhere. Some wouldn’t dream of a tiny house without a coffee table, but others insist that a coffee table isn’t worth the space it takes up.

The final decision lies with you, but here are some points to ponder. 

• Will your living room also serve as your dining room?
• Would you rather have extra storage or more space to move about the house?
• Where else might you set drinks and plates of food if not on one of these tables?

I don’t have a coffee table in my tiny home, but if I were to buy one, I would seriously consider this Lift-Top Coffee Table With Seating by YITAHOME. I’m obsessed with it because it offers seating options that literally disappear when not in use.

If you don’t live tiny yet, you should know that it can be tricky to find seating options that allow you to face another person. This table solves that problem while giving you a place to enjoy your morning java.

But if I found one I love, why did I decide to forego a formal coffee table? So I could use the floor space for two storage ottomans. And why did I do that?

Because a storage ottoman is the best piece of tiny home furniture ever invented.

I’m not being dramatic; storage ottomans are literally the most flexible pieces of tiny home furniture in the world!

Here are just a few of the things they can do.

• Give you a place to rest your feet.
• Provide accessible storage spaces. 
• Serve as a coffee table. (Flat-top versions work best.)
• Turn a couch into a day bed.
• Turn a couch into a makeshift twin bed.
• Provide extra seating. (Seating that will allow friends and family to face each other.)

Are you convinced yet? There are endless options out there, but the Essex Single Storage Ottoman – Threshold (TM) and this Stone Vegan Leather Storage Ottoman by Latitude Run are two of my favorites!

We have a whole tiny house to cover, but before we leave the living area, let’s discuss TVs. 

Just because your house is tiny doesn’t mean your TV has to be. In fact, tiny home owners have some of the biggest screens around.

Case in point: I have a 70″ projector. 

Projectors work well in tiny homes because they add cinematic drama and can be stowed out of sight when not in use. They do require a touch of Rubik’s Cube-ing, though! For this reason, I save my projector screen for movie nights and watch my nightly HGTV show on a laptop.

If that doesn’t sound like the setup for you, a traditional TV could be the way to go. And if you do go that route, remember that it doesn’t necessarily have to hang on the wall. You can also hang a TV with a ceiling mount like this Ceiling Flip-Down TV Mount I found on Amazon.

Now let’s step into the kitchen, shall we?

Choosing furniture for your tiny house kitchen.

No matter what size of home you live in, a functional kitchen is a necessity. So how can you choose furniture pieces that will make cooking in your tiny kitchen a breeze? 

I suggest you select options that offer three things: flexibility, accessibility, and organization.

Here are a few pieces of furniture that could help meet those goals.

• Drop leaf tables
• Rolling carts
• Pull-out pantries

Drop leaf tables

Drop leaf tables or folding countertops are great because they provide valuable work and dining space. So whether your family needs place settings or more desks, a drop leaf table could be the answer. 

Rolling carts

If you have been going back and forth about your small kitchen design, a rolling cart could be the piece of furniture that saves the day. Rolling carts are awesome because they add flexibility to your tiny home layout. One minute you have a mini kitchen island, and the next, your rolling cart can be pushed up against a wall. They are also a great way to add accessible storage!

If you need to see it to believe it, just check out this Catskill Craftsmen Wood-Top Rolling Kitchen Cart. You’ll find it at Lowe’s. Don’t love visual clutter? Just add curtains or some Cotton Rope Woven Baskets to hide anything you don’t want to look at.

Pull-out pantries

I’m about to write a sentence worth reading twice: cabinets work better for dishes, and pull-out pantries work better for food.

This is because dishes stack and tend to be easily visible on shelves. When you try to stuff differently-shaped food items in a cabinet, however, you end up with a disorganized mess. The only thing you’ll ever be able to find is the box of crackers. And only because it will fall out and hit you on the head. Every. Single. Time.

This is where the pull-out pantry is your friend! 

Pull-out pantries keep food items organized and easily accessible. They also conveniently slide away when not in use.

If your needs are functional, I have used and loved this Super Slim White Plastic 5-Tier Pull-Out Pantry that I found on Amazon. But if you want something a little fancier, it would be hard to beat this Rev-A-Shelf Pull-Out Pantry.

Alright, are you ready to tackle the bedroom? 

Furnishing your tiny house bedroom

Furnishing a tiny house bedroom begins with deciding what type of bed setup you’ll have. Furnishing a loft, for example, is quite different than furnishing a downstairs bedroom.

Loft bedrooms 

If you will be sleeping in a loft, you likely won’t have a bed frame. And if that’s the case, be sure to buy a Coconut Coir Under-Mattress Pad to allow for airflow. I have one in my tiny home, and I would buy it again in a heartbeat. You don’t want mold under your mattress! 

Most tiny home lofts can accommodate king-sized beds, but you may want to consider a queen if you would like a short stack of bedside drawers. Since most people aren’t getting dressed in their loft, drawers aren’t absolutely necessary, but even if you skip the drawers, you’ll still want to have a place to store smaller bedtime items like a book or water bottle.

There are many ways to create such a space, but I find that Vertical Hanging Baskets and Floating Shelves both make great bedside storage options!

Downstairs bedrooms

As the tiny home movement progresses, beds in downstairs bedrooms are becoming more popular. Some tiny homes feature designated downstairs bedrooms, while others rely on creative bed options like a trundle bed or wall bed (Murphy bed). 

If you place your bed on the ground floor, you have plenty of options. But here are a few things to consider.

• A traditional bed frame will allow for storage space under the bed. (And possibly in the headboard as well!)
• A Murphy bed will keep your bed easily accessible at night and out of the way during the day. (Add some desks, and you can turn your tiny bedroom into a tiny office!)
• Wall beds don’t take up much space can feature a statement mirror or piece of art on the backside to make your tiny home pop.
• Trundle beds will require the most Rubik’s Cube-ing.

Tiny house beds are a subject I could go on about, but those are the basics. Just know that whether your bed sits in a loft, on a frame, or pops out from a wall, the most important detail is that it offers you a good night’s sleep. 

Tiny home bathroom furnishings

Tiny house bathrooms are generally pretty simple- most of the “furniture,” like a toilet, sink, and shower or tub, are non-negotiable. But that doesn’t mean you don’t want well-crafted versions of those things! To help you sort things out, here is a list of options you’ll want to weigh when considering your small bathroom design.

• Tub vs. shower. It’s worth thinking ahead to the future on this one. Are there kids, pets, or mobility concerns on the horizon?
• Regular toilet vs. waterless toilet. (Municipalities may require a regular toilet for your home to be considered legal. That being said, waterless toilets make parking easier- at least logistically, because they remove blackwater from the equation.)
• Where do you plan to get dressed?
• Where do you plan to do your hair and makeup?
• What privacy concerns do you have?

Personally, I live alone and have no plans for children. For this reason, a simple shower works for me. I have an Ove Decors Breeze Rounded Frosted Shower Enclosure, and I’m not sad about it. The frosted glass offers privacy, and I love that the door slides rather than taking up space by swinging outward.

My other favorite tiny house shower is this DreamLine French Corner Shower Enclosure, which also features sliding doors and is too fabulous to not mention.

The shower vs. tub decision is a personal one, but the toilet is where the government gets involved. And while you you want the government to be on board with your tiny home plans, traditional sewer or septic is not always possible or financially feasible.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to make this decision because my house came double-plumbed. This means the builder plumbed my house to support both a traditional toilet and a Separett Waterless Composting Toilet. The latter of which I would highly recommend!

Double-plumbing allows me to use whichever type of toilet serves my current parking space, and this has come in handy more than once. So just know that double-plumbing for tiny house toilets is a thing!

As far as getting dressed, well, let’s just say I don’t do it in my loft bedroom! I have no desire to put on pants while lying down. And if I were to keep my small closet in the bathroom, I would run the risk of my clothes developing mildew.

For these reasons, my closet is located in the kitchen. But that works for me since I live alone and don’t need a privacy wall.

And there you have it! Those are your very best tiny house furniture options. Since you’ll probably be needing one of everything, I’ve taken the liberty of compiling everything mentioned in this article below in the form of a helpful buying guide.

Are you ready to check it out?

Your official room-by-room guide to furnishing your tiny home!

Living Room 

The Couch in My Tiny Home (Obsessed. Obsessed.)

Jovie Sectional Couch by Home Reserve

Storage Ottomans

Essex Single Storage Ottoman – Threshold (TM)

Stone Vegan Leather Storage Ottoman by Latitude Run

Convenience Concepts Designs4Comfort Storage Ottoman With Trays

Coffee Tables

Amethy Mid-Century Modern Lift-top Coffee Table With Storage

Lift-Top Coffee Table With Seating by YITAHOME

Ceiling TV Mount

Ceiling Flip-Down TV Mount

Kitchen

Rolling Carts

Catskill Craftsman Wood-Top Rolling Kitchen Cart

HOMCOM Kitchen Island on Wheels

Cotton Rope Woven Baskets

Pull-Out Pantries

Super Slim White Plastic 5-Tier Pull-Out Pantry

Rev-A-Shelf Pull-Out Pantry

Bedroom

Under-Mattress Pad

Coconut Coir Under-Mattress Pad (Must-have for lofts bedrooms!)

Bedside Storage Options

Vertical Hanging Baskets

Floating Shelves

Bathroom

Waterless Toilet

Separett Waterless Composting Toilet

Shower

Ove Decors Breeze Rounded Frosted Shower Enclosure

DreamLine French Corner Shower Enclosure

That’s all for today! Thanks for joining me here on The Wayward Home blog. Be sure to share this article with yourself (and a friend!), so you will have your tiny house furniture guide on hand as you furnish your dream home. See you next time!